Girls with Sharp Sticks (Girls with Sharp Sticks, #1)(41)

She seems to contemplate her answer, biting her lower lip. “I’m sorry if I’m scaring you,” she says. “I didn’t mean to scare Lennon Rose, either.”

My cheeks heat up, anger boiling over. “What did you say to her?” I ask. “Why did you make her cry?”

Valentine holds up her hands in surrender. “That was never my intention. I just wanted her to wake up.”

“Wake up to what?” I ask.

“I can’t tell you,” she says. “You have to find out for yourself.”

“What? That’s ridiculous. Just tell me!”

“I can’t,” she says like it hurts her. “They’ve trained you not to believe what you’re told by others. You have to come to it on your own. I can’t wake you, Philomena.”

I’m convinced that she’s not lying, even if I have no idea what she’s talking about.

Valentine presses her lips together apologetically. She glances at the bed, and then she walks out of Lennon Rose’s room, closing the door behind her.

I’m stunned by Valentine’s words, but not exactly scared of her anymore. I’ll have to tell Sydney about this. Again—what am I supposed to wake up from?

Now that I’m alone in the room, the grief hits. Lennon Rose is everywhere.

Her sweet scent is still in the air, her hairbrush on the table with long blond strands hanging from it, her shoes by the bed.

She didn’t even take her shoes, Annalise had said. That detail bothers me now.

I walk around, poking through the items on Lennon Rose’s dresser, finding nothing unusual. Anton said that he’d talked to Lennon Rose about her parents not being able to afford the school any longer. But why didn’t she tell us?

There’s nothing obvious here, but then I think about hiding places and turn to where Valentine was when I walked in. I cross to the bed and lower myself to check under the mattress.

I run my hand along the fabric until I touch the spine of a book. My heart jumps. I pull out a small, leather-bound book and read the title aloud in a whisper.

“The Sharpest Thorns.”

The title is unusual, the red font dug deeply into the leather. I’m a mixture of curious and alarmed. This doesn’t seem like a book Lennon Rose would own. And it’s not a book the school would give her.

Scanning through the pages, I discover it’s a collection of poetry. I sit on the edge of Lennon Rose’s bed, the springs creaking, and begin reading the first poem.

“Girls with Sharp Sticks”

Men are full of rage

Unable to control themselves.

That’s what women were told

How they were raised

What they believed.

So women learned to make do

Achieving more as men did less

And for that, men despised them

Despised their accomplishments.

Over time

The men wanted to dissolve women’s rights

All so they could feel needed.

But when they couldn’t control women

The men found a group they didn’t disdain—

At least not yet.

Their daughters, pretty little girls

A picture of femininity for them to mold

To train

To control

To make precious and obedient.

She would make a good wife someday, he thought

Not like the useless one he had already.

The little girls attended school

Where the rules had changed.

The girls were taught untruths,

Ignorance the only subject.

When math was pushed aside for myth

The little girls adapted.

They gathered sticks to count them

learning their own math.

And then they sharpened their sticks.

It was these same little girls

Who came home one day

And pushed their daddies down the stairs.

They bashed in their heads with hammers while they slept.

They set the houses on fire with their

daddies inside.

And then those little girls with sharp sticks

Flooded the schools.

They rid the buildings of false ideas.

The little girls took everything over

Including teaching their male peers

how to be “Good Little Boys.”

And so it was for a generation

The little girls became the predators.

I reread the last line, a curse on my lips, a fire in my belly. I’ve never read anything so violent, so angry. I’m scandalized. I’m exhilarated. I’m inspired.

Is this what Lennon Rose read? Did she read it just before the open house? I think back to her leaving her room, averting her eyes. Was she scared? Was she angry, like the girls in this poem?

I read the poem again, analyzing each word. Increasingly breathless as the little girls are controlled. My heart pounding as they fight back. And there’s such violence—like nothing I’ve read before. The girls change things. They get free. They take control.

I flip through the book, noting that several pages have been torn out, leaving behind ragged edges of missing poems. My pulse is racing, throbbing. My hands shake.

There is a knock at the door and I quickly jump up, alarmed. I hear it open, realizing immediately that it’s not this door—it’s one farther down the hall. The Guardian tells one of the girls he has their vitamins. I shouldn’t be in Lennon Rose’s room; I can’t let him catch me in here.